Mistletoe Mistress

'You could do it and Hawk Mallen knows it or else he wouldn't have offered you the job.'

'Charles, I'm sorry I phoned you at this time of night, but I don't feel I know enough about the Mallen Corporation and…and Hawk Mallen to make a decision. Would you mind filling me in on what you know?'

'On Hawk or the Mallen empire?' Charles's voice was very dry.

'Both.'

By the time they finished the call, fifteen minutes later, Joanne knew the Mallen Corporation had been founded by Hawk's American/French grandfather over fifty years ago, beginning with a textile warehouse shop that quickly grew into a string of the same and then diversified into more avenues than even Charles was sure of. The old man had had one son, Hawk's father, who, as Hawk had already mentioned, had been killed in an automobile accident, thereupon making Hawk a millionaire several times over at the tender age of twenty.

Charles had said more, much more, but Joanne had found her attention wandering more than once as a pair of very blue, piercingly intent eyes kept swimming into her consciousness. Hawk Mallen was a mesmerising man to be with and the compelling weight of his personality stayed long after the man himself had gone. He exuded energy and power and vigour, and those moments in his arms on the dance-floor… She shut her eyes as her senses swam. If she took this job-if-she would make sure she never put herself in such a vulnerable position again.

Her thoughts continued along this same path once the call had ended and she had showered and slipped into bed.

Other women, more worldly, experienced women, might be able to handle a man like Hawk and enjoy the challenge, but he frightened her half to death. She shut her eyes tightly in the warm darkness, her toes curling into the linen covers.

Not that he had behaved as anything but the perfect gentleman on their ride home, seeing her to her door with a polite handshake and almost distant smile that would have sat well on a maiden aunt. In fact from the moment he had explained about the job one could almost have called his attitude cool, certainly formal… She refused to recognise even a shred of pique at his lack of interest. It suited her-the fact that he was concerned only with her ability to do the job he had in mind. It did. She knew only too well how the man-woman relationship, with all its complications, could prove a time bomb that ruined the lives of everyone within a mile radius.

As though it were yesterday her mother's face was there, pretty, irritated, as she had handed her over to the social worker at the home. 'It will only be for a little while, Joanne.' Her mother had clearly wished she were anywhere but in the neat, orderly office with officialdom present. 'Just until Mummy gets a nice house to live in.'

The 'nice house' had taken three years to achieve, three years in which she was moved from foster home to foster home, until, at the age of seven, her mother had married. Not again-she had never been married to Joanne's father who had deserted his pregnant girlfriend once the good news was imparted-but for the first time. That marriage had lasted nine months, and by the time she was eight she was back in a foster home again, with the knowledge that her mother could barely wait to see the back of her.

When she was nine her mother had married Bob, and it had been at his insistence that she was once again placed in her mother's care.

She had never wanted to be alone with Bob; she hadn't been able to put it into words at the time-the strange feeling she experienced when his pale, almost opaque eyes slid over her slim, childish body-but when the marriage had been two months old, and the police had arrived on the doorstep one morning, she had known then, young as she was, that she had been right to withstand his overtures of friendship. He had been convicted of several cases of child abuse, a paedophile of the worst kind, and strangely her mother had seemed to blame her for the break-up of her second marriage, screaming at her that she should never have had her back to stay, that if Bob hadn't known about Joanne he wouldn't have asked her to marry him and she would have been spared all the resulting humiliation.

She had been dispatched to the children's home the day after the court case, and had known then that she would never live with her mother again. Her mother had visited her now and again over the next few years, usually with a different 'uncle' in tow each time, some jovial and loud some not so jolly, but had always managed to make her feel the visit was on sufferance.

The caustic memories of a thousand little rejections which added up to a gigantic whole had burnt so painfully deep within her psyche that even now they made her screw up her eyes and curl into a tight little embryonic ball under the covers.

Commitment, marriage, men-it all meant disappointment and betrayal; she had learnt the fact first-hand, watching her mother's desperate search for love. And children-the biological fruit of that sexual urge which drove men into pretending they were what they weren't, and foolish women into believing it-were the innocent casualties that suffered the most.

She had vowed many times during her tear-filled adolescence that she would never allow herself to be subjugated like her mother; she didn't want or need a man in her life-they meant trouble and pain and ultimately disappointment. Her mother had grown bitter in time- in the last conversation they had had before she died, she had told Joanne over and over again that it wasn't in a man's nature to be monogamous, that marriage and fidelity were the world's biggest lie.

Did she, Joanne, really believe that? she asked herself now, her eyes still tightly shut. She wasn't sure, not deep inside, but she was sure that she would never dare to take the risk, and also that casual relationships, of the sort her mother had eventually subscribed to, were not for her. And whenever the longing to have someone- one man, to come home to, to love-overwhelmed her- as it did more and more as each year ticked by-she drew on the memories and the agony of the past and it fled.

She had her work, her home and her friends-it was safe, controlled, she was in charge and no one could hurt her. It wasn't ideal, but it would have to do.

Charles and Clare had helped her erase some of the pain of the past, as much by the way they lived, their devotion to each other and their children, as their actual friendship. For the first time she had found it within herself to acknowledge that some folk-the lucky ones-could find that elusive element called true love and hang on to it despite all the trials and heartache. But not her. Definitely not her. She just didn't have what it would take. She had made that decision years ago and there was no reason for any doubts now-none, not one.

Once Joanne had accepted Hawk Mallen's offer the next day she found herself swept into a kind of whirlwind that had her breathless most of the time. In view of all she had previously decided about the need for a change, for fresh fields and new horizons, the offer was too good to turn down, but she had thought one of his countless minions would deal with her from that point and it was disconcerting to find that Hawk himself intended to oversee each detail. He was the sort of man who generated excitement and flurry and sheer atmosphere wherever he was, and the following weeks sped by in ever increasing velocity.

Of course she could appreciate Bergique & Son's future was close to his heart, or his grandfather's, to be more precise, and he needed to keep a tight hold of the reins, but the apprehension and unease she had felt that first night was always there, at the back of her mind. And she couldn't quite work out why. He was businesslike, cool, remote, but not unhelpful-very much the austere, detached tycoon, but always ready to listen to her ideas or opinions. And yet… 'Oh, stop imagining things.' She leant against the wall of the lift which was whisking her up to the meeting with Hawk that morning.

Just because she had caught him looking at her…oddly once or twice, it didn't mean he was regretting his decision to appoint her manageress of the failing firm, or that he was going to tell her he had changed his mind, or any of the other scenarios she had gone through each night in the quiet of her bed.

He was just a disturbing man, that was all it was, and in a few more days she would be over the Channel in France and he would be here in England, or dashing off to America or any one of a dozen countries he seemed to visit frequently. She just had to be cool, calm and collected, serene even, in the five days that were left. That wasn't beyond her, surely?

It shouldn't have been. It probably wouldn't have been, if poor Maggie, who had been totally overawed by Hawk's commanding presence from day one, hadn't tripped over her own feet and deposited most of their morning coffee right over her illustrious boss's immaculate silk-covered chest.